


Like Wind on Skin

by recrudescence



Category: Inception
Genre: Drunk Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:58:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yusuf has elegant hands, long-fingered and supple and almost delicate, whether they happen to be handling a flask of some unidentified substance or calmly adjusting his glasses or in dire danger of becoming ink-smeared from the pens he always leaves uncapped. Arthur can’t stop watching them.</p><p><b>Contains references to drug use and addiction.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Wind on Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt from the kink meme: _After Arthur acts as a test subject, Yusuf feels bad for kicking him out of chairs and slapping him all day. He offers to buy him a drink after work. That turns into a drunken hook-up that they will both probably regret in the morning, but neither of them cares as it's happening. Arthur's exact words are, "Yusuf, just do it already!"_
> 
> Thank you to [](http://chibi-lurrel.livejournal.com/profile)[**chibi_lurrel**](http://chibi-lurrel.livejournal.com/) for providing input on warnings!

Yusuf has elegant hands, long-fingered and supple and almost delicate, whether they happen to be handling a flask of some unidentified substance or calmly adjusting his glasses or in dire danger of becoming ink-smeared from the pens he always leaves uncapped. His shirts might suffer on occasion, but somehow he always emerges unscathed from the wrists down, both hands smooth and sinuous and meticulously clean.

Arthur can’t stop watching them.

This itself is nothing remarkable. Arthur observes many things as part of his job and he’s used to being on his game; he’s used to tracking people and learning them and biding his time before he hears back from whatever additional feelers he’s sent out. He’s used to discreetness the way he becomes used to Yusuf’s dexterity with slides, with chopsticks, with the coils of the PASIV Arthur lets him wind away even though he normally hesitates before allowing anyone else the chance.

Arthur watches more than he should, watches in the name of indulgence more so than business, and watching means he notices these things. It also means he catches sight of Yusuf watching him back, a theory he confirms by habitually leaning over various tables while Yusuf is within view.

Ostensibly, it’s to study what Ariadne’s completed throughout the day. Really, it’s to heave a sigh in Yusuf’s direction the third or fourth time he catches him in the act. “Get your eyes off my ass.”

Yusuf doesn’t deny it, just smiles and turns back to his beakers, smooth as an oar dipping into water. “Piss off. In trousers like that, no one in their right mind could keep from staring at it.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this does nothing to put him off. Not that day, not the next, not the next after that.

And Arthur still almost regrets being unconscious when those beautiful hands try their hardest to slap him out of sleep.

The sedative, he’s told later, is coming along nicely. Eames takes a bit too much pleasure in relaying the news.

Arthur spends the rest of the afternoon rubbing the soreness of his cheek like a chastened child and wondering if he should purchase some pillows. The mattress on the warehouse floor doesn’t provide nearly enough padding and he can cosset himself a little now that he isn’t stuck in the barebones comforts of the military.

What he doesn’t expect is for anyone else to acknowledge it. “You don’t have much to cushion your falls,” Yusuf says. There’s a line of concern in his brow.

“Nothing I can’t walk off,” Arthur says, leaning on the elbow that doesn’t have a bruise throbbing through the skin at its apex.

This doesn’t seem to placate Yusuf in the slightest. “Can I get you a drink to take the edge off, at least? I’m staying in a place that seems to have an impressive selection even for France.”

“Eames was going to go under in a little while. I told him I’d be around to supervise.”

“Eames,” Yusuf says decisively, “can muck around in his Browning disguise all he pleases without you there. Have Ariadne keep an eye on him. You’re the one who’s been my patient zero all day, not them. I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?”

“I don’t think,” starts Arthur, and Yusuf looks at him with astute eyes and a faint curve to his lips, as if he doesn’t expect Arthur to refuse. His fingers are busy doing up the buttons on his vest, shirt cuffs still unfastened and hanging over his hands. Arthur follows them with his eyes as they move higher, watches the fabric fall away to bare the bone of one wrist, thinks of coils of wire and wineglass stems and ink that never stains.

“Sure,” he says.

\---

Yusuf is lodging in a building that feels less like a hotel and more like someone’s home, cozy and comfortable with deeply cushioned seats, the polar opposite of Arthur’s own sharp-cornered accommodations. Arthur orders whiskey, lets Yusuf cluck his tongue at him for not taking advantage of whatever regional specialties are in stock, and eventually cedes.

The wine really is good, a deep dry vintage with a name Arthur can’t pronounce. Yusuf drinks with poise and his nails drum the side of his glass and if Arthur finds himself contemplating what it would taste like on Yusuf’s tongue, what it would be like to bury his fingers in the soft curls of his hair and find out, then surely he can’t be blamed. Not for that, not for following the wet flash of Yusuf’s tongue when it glances over his lower lip.

The two of them are seated close to a corner of the bar, enwrapped by the clink of glasses and hums of conversation and tasteful lighting that catches off the lines of Yusuf’s profile in hues of auburn and silver. When he smiles at Arthur, there’s a hint of topaz in his gaze. “Tomorrow,” he says, “I’ll use someone else if I need to run any tests. Would you like to administer the slapping?”

He doesn’t seem to be joking.

They talk of mindless things, mundane things, and Arthur idly wonders what it would be like to feel those hands seize hold of his hair while he goes down on him. Eventually, he’s bold enough to get to the heart of the matter, exploiting Yusuf’s weakness instead of revealing his own. “So is this really out of the goodness of your heart or are we going to talk about why you keep staring at my ass?”

Once again, Yusuf denies nothing and betrays no surprise whatsoever. “Mr. Arthur, I don’t think you know me.” He pauses, watches Arthur intently as he refills his glass. “No. It’s never Mr. Arthur, is it? Always just Arthur. You got into the game young, didn’t you?”

He did. Making all the wrong choices, dealing here and there in high school but not knowing enough about what he was really dealing _with_ , just knowing there was a market for it and money in it and he was addicted by seventeen and had night terrors from the side effects and ended up in rehab before he had a chance to graduate high school. There’s a bit of a junkie still in him each time he goes under and he knows Cobb’s in danger of going the same way, but he doesn’t have anything to offer Cobb in its place besides his loyalty.

When Special Forces takes you in and trains you, your identity is their choosing. Being freelance sometimes unnerves Arthur in a way combat never could.

“I did,” he tells Yusuf, who must know already, somehow, and leaves it at that. There’s information about everyone floating around out there, information he accesses often and by any means, and he knows there are others like him, running point, running background checks, running through layers of illicitly obtained federal clearance, doing the same.

It bothers him that he still scarcely knows anything about Yusuf, though he did some research when Cobb announced he was bringing both Eames and a chemist back to Paris with him. Operating on such limited notice had only allowed for limited results.

“And you. You’re what, some kind of pusher?” They’re nearly finished with a second bottle by now and he has no qualms about jumping straight for the jugular. He’s known too many so-called chemists who thrived on passing their latest creations onto unsuspecting dream-chasers looking for a fix.

“No. Unless you count all the pushing I’ve done to you lately.” Yusuf smiles again and finishes his wine. “I’ve got the right credentials and everything, don’t you worry.”

Arthur is fairly sure he’s being toyed with. “I’m supposed to believe that when you’re friends with Eames?” He knows as he says it that it’s an illogical accusation. Plenty of dreamsharing participants have advanced degrees that don’t hinder their criminal hobnobbing in the least.

“Academic forgery is rather tasteless,” Yusuf answers lightly. “I’ve always thought so.”

“Also something I’m not likely to believe.”

“I met Eames when he talked me into loaning him money, which I never intend to do again. It’s colored my perception of him.” His hand is very close; Arthur can follow every shift of sinew and shadow as he absently twists at a napkin. “First impressions are very important.”

“That,” Arthur says, “I can believe. How did he even convince you at all?”

Yusuf’s eyebrows arch ever so slightly. “I don’t just throw money away out of the goodness of my heart. If my first impression of someone also involves the fit of their trousers, it’s no hardship.”

Arthur, lifting his glass to his mouth, nearly misses.

\---

It doesn’t take much. A sprinkling of soft laughter, a dash of _haven’t you had a bit too much_ and _perhaps we should continue this someplace with a towel or two handy_ , a soupcon of Yusuf’s knuckles brushing Arthur’s cheek when he sputters, a generous serving of Arthur strategically tilting his head and parting his mouth as soon as he has control over it again.

Yusuf is there, closer still, hands actually on him, dark eyes. Arthur’s lips brush a stray drop of wine clinging to the skin of his index finger and his palm is so soft, cool like breeze, or maybe it’s Arthur’s cheeks that are too warm and Yusuf’s hand is only leeching the heat from them. His skin smells like sweetness without being cloying, like the richness good cologne, like the pungency of the systematic scrubbings he puts himself through when he’s hard at work, and by the time Arthur realizes his head is resting heavy and lazy on Yusuf’s shoulder it’s too late to deny it or do much of anything but keep it there.

“That was poor timing, wasn’t it?” and he can feel the timbre of Yusuf’s voice, right there against his cheek, careful lips and the rub of his beard. It doesn’t occur to Arthur to open his mouth until Yusuf’s face is turning the other way.

“Just a little, yeah,” he mutters, dry, like he isn’t fidgeting in his seat just from the way one of those hands is curled atop his thigh, there below the overhanging bar top where maybe no one would even notice if it were to drift a few inches up and a few inches over to cup him through his trousers.

“That’s your line?” he demands, once he’s forced himself to sit upright and skewer Yusuf with the most unimpressed look he can muster. “‘Come back to my place, I’ve got _towels_ ’?”

When Yusuf laughs, it’s like swallowing another glass of wine all in one go. “There’s just no getting anything past you, is there?” Then he produces a vial from inside his jacket, habile as a magician.

For a moment, Arthur just stares at it suspiciously. It’s half-filled with some kind of liquid, honey-hued, and identical in Arthur’s mind to the innumerable other unlabeled vials littering Yusuf’s workspace.

“What, are you planning on putting something in my drink?”

“Oh, Lord, no.” Yusuf actually tuts, affronted as a maiden aunt. “You’ll put it in yourself.”

Arthur glances at the little glass cylinder pinched between his fingers. He can’t be sure whether Yusuf passed it to him or whether he picked it up voluntarily. “Without even knowing what it is?”

“I’m your chemist,” Yusuf says deliberately, stretching out the words either for the benefit of Arthur’s brain cells or the chagrin of his endocrine system. “I’m part of your team. You’ve been taking whatever I see fit to give you for the past few days.”

He grins, not quite reassuring but not quite mocking either, and for a moment he looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to hit you this time. Not unless you ask for it nicely.”

This, of course, means Yusuf must have brought his mystery mixture with him on purpose. Arthur doesn’t put much stock in happenstance and he isn’t so drunk that the obvious escapes him. It’s satisfying in a cockeyed sort of way to think that Yusuf must have planned on this happening.

On one hand, Arthur has nothing but respect for that. Planning in advance often isn’t possible and he’s the one expected to see to it whenever it is, and Yusuf thus far has done nothing to give him pause or disappoint him. But on the other hand, there’s always time, Arthur knows this too, and who is Yusuf, anyway? Some semi-stranger that Cobb picked up in Kenya when he was particularly desperate, someone Eames endorses, someone Arthur doesn’t know nearly as much about as he should, someone with lovely hands and expectant eyes and the start of a smile curling at the corners of a mouth Arthur wants nothing more than to learn every bit of.

Yusuf’s hand does shift those fateful few inches then and it feels so good Arthur would let himself rut right up into it if they weren’t still seated out in the open where anyone might see him squirming and making a spectacle of himself.

Arthur unscrews the stopper and empties the contents into his glass, not once breaking eye contact.

\---

Logically, the only thing to do is vacate the bar in favor of Yusuf’s room. It doesn’t behoove dream criminals to call attention to themselves for any reason and that includes public indecency.

It’s only a matter of tabs and elevators closing behind them, and then it’s Yusuf forcing his tongue into his mouth, it’s Arthur groaning and letting himself be pressed to the door the instant it clicks shut, it’s Yusuf’s fingers caught between Arthur’s waistcoat buttons and Arthur’s caught in Yusuf’s hair.

“God, it’s like you’re bloody _hungry_ for it.” Yusuf’s voice is breathless, almost drowned out by the groan Arthur gives at not having anything to kiss anymore. “We’ll have to see just how far your little obsession goes.” Not derisive, but not letting Arthur deny it either, just slipping a finger into his mouth.

Arthur’s eyes practically roll back in his head.

He suckles at it immediately, tongue curling around the tip, head angling to take in another. Triumph, heady, washes over him when Yusuf’s eyes go lidded and his hand clenches in Arthur’s half-untucked shirt. He amps it up a little more, sucks harder, blatantly moans around Yusuf’s fingers and slants a thigh against the front of his trousers. Lust and alcohol are wreaking synaptic havoc on his self-control, but fortunately Yusuf doesn’t seem to mind at all.

“You take it beautifully,” he whispers. His mouth is at the side of Arthur’s neck now, facial hair scratching and teeth scraping, and when he sucks just over the pulse point it feels almost too good, sharp and wonderful, like he’s trying to take the frantic cadence of Arthur’s heartbeat into his mouth. Arthur groans again, partly because his neck has always been sensitive but also because he isn’t in seventh grade anymore and they both have work in the morning. As averse as he is to ending up explaining a hickey or six tomorrow, he’s even more averse to letting Yusuf’s fingers slip free.

As a compromise, he tenses, bites warningly.

Yusuf lets up instantly. “I don’t plan to leave any sort of mark on you, don’t you worry.” His free hand is splayed on Arthur’s back just a little too low to be decent, guiding his hips to press forward even more brazenly. “I’m sure you’ve enough of those already,” he adds, knuckles brushing over Arthur’s hip where he landed a bit too hard a few too many times and where there is indeed a rather hideous bruise.

Arthur hums, sucks his fingers a little deeper, squirming when he feels the heat of Yusuf’s cock against his thigh and the heat of his breath against his ear. “Jesus, look at the mess you’re making of yourself. Never thought I’d see the day.”

If he weren’t doing his best to deep-throat Yusuf’s fingers, Arthur would laugh. He makes a habit of being neatly dressed, a holdover the period of his life where having so much as a button out of place was unacceptable, and even though he generally ends up rolling up his sleeves and loosening his tie by the end of the day it seems to surprise people that he doesn’t mind a little mussing. Or a lot, depending on the situation.

Yusuf’s other hand is gripping his ass in earnest now, hard enough to feel good without bridging into discomfort. “You’d go at it all sodding night if I let you. It’s like your mouth was made for this, isn’t it?”

He’s ready to grit out some kind of affirmation, ready to agree to anything even if it involves going back to the ground floor and spreading himself out on top of the bar, but then Yusuf tapers off. “Babbling on, aren’t I?”

“’s fine, keep going, I like it,” Arthur blurts out, not quite hearing himself. It’s nice, the way Yusuf’s voice makes heat curl in his middle and the way his accent wraps around vowels, refined, not pitted with glottal stops the way Eames’s sometimes is when he isn’t playing a part.

“Bit of an Anglophile?” asks Yusuf, and he’s teasing, he’s not expecting an answer, but Arthur senses his ears burning like twin brushfires all the same.

And now Yusuf is looking at him with understanding in his eyes and Arthur feels stripped even though he’s fully clothed and still has a gun under his jacket. “I see,” Yusuf murmurs. “If you’re saving yourself, I can—”

“Yusuf,” Arthur hisses, “just _do_ it already.” He grips his arms, twists him around to reverse their positions, and somehow he’s kissing Yusuf up against the door and working a hand down the front of his pants without bungling either action. One or both of them is hissing obscenities and his cock feels so fucking _good_ in the hot clench of Arthur’s fist, would probably feel even more amazing elsewhere, and Arthur’s about a second away from getting on his knees then and there. Still dressed, still just inside the door, and he’d do it, bury his face between his legs, let Yusuf grip his head in both hands and force himself down his throat until he can’t remember there’s such a thing as self-possession.

Then Yusuf’s fingers close around him in return and everything tips sideways.

New to this particular job, maybe, but Yusuf is nothing if not quick on the uptake. A quick learner who's got quick fingers curling in Arthur’s hair, legs spread over his hips, body bearing down more firmly now. Firmly enough for Arthur to feel the need rolling off him, the heat surging under his skin, between his legs, matching and mingling with his own and not doing anything at all to quell it. He’s not sure when he wound up flat on his back in the center of a ludicrously comfortable bed, but he’s not about to start raising a fuss on that front.

“I want..." Yusuf is murmuring into one of Arthur’s reddened ears, sighing, kissing there. And Arthur is still rocking and surging steadily up against him, Yusuf’s hands hiking his shirt higher until Arthur shimmies out of it altogether. He’s exhilarated to the point of feeling almost high—which, some vestige of logic reminds him, isn’t actually out of the question depending on whatever was in that last glass of wine—just from Yusuf kissing him over and over with those plush lips, just from Yusuf’s hands deftly slipping inside his clothes and working him free of them until everything hits the floor in a wrinkled mess. Arthur notes in passing that his Glock is still in arm’s reach, half-covered by the inside out sleeve of his shirt, then notices Yusuf grabbing lube and a condom from somewhere, tossing them onto the bed, and _that_ deserves much more than a mere passing glance.

By now, Arthur isn’t above spreading himself wide and letting himself be toyed with.

When the first finger presses into him, it’s like the room spins on its axis.

Arthur pants and curses and ends up clutching at the bed as if he’s in danger of being thrown off. He lets Yusuf press those gorgeous fingers inside him, lets Yusuf curl his tongue around the head of his cock, working him open while he sucks him. He’s slow about it, unashamed, lashes dark against his cheeks as he takes Arthur into his mouth, deep enough that the brush of facial hair against Arthur’s inner thighs is in danger of driving him mad.

The next thing he knows, a voice that must be Yusuf’s but sounds much rawer is asking, “Can you handle another?” and Arthur can’t even answer him at first. He’s practically gagging for it, writhing and openmouthed like he’s about to shoot off just from being asked, gripping his wrist to keep them in him and fucking himself on Yusuf’s fingers as much as Yusuf is fucking him with them.

Blood rushing between his ears and legs simultaneously, making Arthur feel like he's on the verge of flying apart, because Yusuf is saying things again, maddening things, and sounding all twisted up and desperate and practically biting the words into his skin. Then touching him, everywhere, clothes gone and skin against searing-hot skin. When one hand grips him, firm and dizzying around his cock, Arthur jerks into the feel of it, fingertips digging into smooth-skinned shoulders and his mouth coming open around a garbled cry. "Yusuf."

He’s too quiet, too shaky. " _Yusuf_." Arthur gets one hand against his cheek, fingertips catching the plump curve of his lips, Yusuf’s tongue flickering between them. “Slow down or this is gonna end too fast.”

Yusuf is laughing. There’s a bite mark in the shape of Arthur’s mouth gleaming wetly on his chest, lamplight gleaming on cast-aside foil. “It won’t, I can guarantee you that much.”

When they fuck, it jars Arthur up against the headboard until his shoulders ache. He lets himself be bent nearly in half, caught up in the sound of Yusuf’s gasps, the burn of muscles forced open and stretched wide, the feel of Yusuf’s cock pressing into him so hard he practically chokes on his own wetly hiccupping breaths. So much for not making him ache. He comes without realizing it at first, the orgasm sneaking up on him and shotgunning through his bones, leaving him with a handful of heat and blackness eating at the edges of his vision.

And Yusuf is still in him, the two of them twisted into some nightmarish avant-garde contortionist’s version of missionary position that feels amazing even though Arthur has an arm lashed around Yusuf’s neck and the other gripping at the nightstand for purchase. He’s scattering things everywhere by clawing out blindly, he has one ankle practically behind his neck, and he’s _still_ trying to bend even further and spread himself wider. There’s sweat running into his eyes and Yusuf’s hand is tight around him, working over him hard and fast even though he just fucking _came_.

It actually doesn’t occur to Arthur that he’s already one orgasm down until he’s practically wailing towards the ceiling and arching as far off the bed as he can as Yusuf brings him off again. Even then, he doesn’t feel any actual sense of release, still aching for it already getting hard again, still stretched right on the edge, twisting and sweating and smearing come all over his midsection. “ _Fuck_ , oh God, fuck you, what _was_ that? What did you give me?”

“Something to make you last a little longer, that’s all.” Yusuf says, nonchalant, and Arthur hates himself for moaning when he pulls out and directs him over onto his side. “Hold your leg up, please.”

He can’t even protest when Yusuf pushes his leg out of the way. Just feeling the blunt head of his prick pressing at his hole a second time is enough to ruin Arthur’s composure and he obligingly grips himself behind the knee because refusing on principle makes no fucking sense at this point and he just needs to fucking _come_. So he does it, drawing his leg up as far as he can, digging nails into the flesh of his own thigh, and promptly has all the air forced out of his lungs when Yusuf slides into him again, hard and all at once.

It’s brutal, Yusuf’s body driving into his body while Arthur’s other hand is pinned beneath him and he can’t twist his head back far enough to kiss him without Yusuf meeting him halfway. When Yusuf sucks hard at the skin behind one of his ears, Arthur does everything he can to contort his way into a position that lets him press his tongue into Yusuf’s mouth, no matter how clumsily, and only ends up shuddering from the effort. He whines, frustrated, clenched around his cock and straining with every fiber of his being just to _touch_. The sudden shift of Yusuf’s hips, lighting Arthur’s entire body up from the inside, just has him keening helplessly—humiliatingly—until Yusuf takes pity on him by taking his mouth.

He still can’t get enough of those lips, whimpering in protest when Yusuf breaks the kiss and moves on to kissing the crest of his zygomatic, the side of his face still sore from hitting the floor too hard and too often during all their test runs. It’s very sweet and symbolic and couldn’t be more inappropriate. Arthur is growl-pleading “ _need it, touch me, keep fucking me_ ,” and when Yusuf finally, _finally_ folds those glorious fingers around his cock he could fucking _cry_ it feels so good.

His chest is tight, shoulders heaving and stomach knotting up, and Yusuf is still a warm, heavy, self-satisfied presence against him and inside him. Yusuf’s name is in his throat as Yusuf’s mouth is _on_ his throat and Arthur lets go of his leg to grip himself with a slippery hand overtop Yusuf’s own, jerk-twisting faster still and not caring what Yusuf sees as he thrashes against the mattress and every last iota of him seems to contract and then release like so many tight-coiled springs. He’s actually sobbing raggedly, something that might mortify him if he weren’t addled from drinking and desperation, finally spent as he flops back on top of the sheets, not minding at all if he's flopping onto Yusuf in the process.

Anything he says out loud gets lost in the slope of Yusuf’s back, which seems to be doubling as a pillow.

\---

Normally, Arthur doesn’t go in for much post-coital touching. He likes his personal space, he doesn’t like the tacky feel of sweat-cooled skin, and he’s been told he kicks in his sleep. It’s all a matter of preference and practicality.

After a little too much to drink, a little too much indulging after hours, and he’s perfectly content to burrow his face against whatever expanse of relatively clean skin happens to be under it. It turns out to be Yusuf’s stomach, now that he's turned over, which turns out to be _annoying_ when Yusuf starts tittering.

Arthur turns his head enough to nip just a little. “You’re so fucking proud of yourself right now, aren’t you?” He’s too fucked out to bother pretending to be pissed off with him.

Yusuf shrugs. His nails are scratching lightly at Arthur’s scalp and it should feel far more demeaning that it does. “Are you staying, then?”

“I’m trying to decide if I should do the walk of shame now or in the morning.”

“There’s an iron,” Yusuf points out helpfully. “Wake up early, set yourself to rights, and you can walk with perfect dignity back to your hotel and still have time to change. I can tell everyone you’re stopping to pick up coffee for us all, but you’ll have to actually bring some in if that’s the case.”

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to sell me on staying or leaving,” Arthur mutters. “How about this: as long as I don’t have to be patient zero again tomorrow, I’ll do whatever you want.”

Without a word, Yusuf carefully moves out from under him. Arthur’s initial reaction is to frown, but when the touches start he’s sighing into the sheets in no time, too drained to do much of anything but absorb the sensation of Yusuf’s lips passing carefully over the most tender parts of his body, seeking out his bruises and mapping them.

“You’ll feel better soon.” Yusuf’s hand is gentle on the sore portion of Arthur’s hip. He sounds different now, still self-assured but more subdued somehow. “It isn’t always this hard to perfect a sedative. Mr. Cobb is an ambitious man.” Another kiss, this time to the arch of his cheekbone. “It isn’t always this hard.”

Arthur shrugs. “Cobb has reason to be ambitious. He’s got more at stake here than anyone else.”

Yusuf kisses his shoulder. “Perhaps.”

It never occurs to Arthur to ask what he means by that.  



End file.
